The effective deployment of highly sophisticated and expensive missile systems requires a high level of competence. To achieve this level of competence training must be realistic and at the same time cost effective. Live firings while providing valuable experience at some phases of the training program, generally may not be suitable for teaching and are expensive even when practicing with reuseable decoys.
Target simulators increasingly are used for training purposes as well as providing a reference test source for system readiness. Signals have been generated which it is hoped simulate a reflected radar image. Circuitry which produces Doppler shifted signals at different power levels in response to analog control signals have been developed. However, by and large, the simulators have been unduly complicated and therefore susceptible to reliability problems. Frequently, the simulators were programmed to simulate a particular flight envelope of a target and lacked the flexibility to be modified, in part, by manual inputs or actuated with fully automatic or fully manual inputs to allow characterization of a variety of flight envelopes that include routine and erratic target flight patterns.
Thus, there is a continuing need in the state-of-the-art for a programmable radar target simulator capable of operation in a fully automatic, semi-automatic or fully manual mode of operation while being of uncomplicated design to assure a full display of operating test parameters for an operator.